Bones found in England reveal past of violence and cannibalism

Thousands of Quartered human bones were found in a deep well in southwest England revealing to archaeologists a dark chapter of British prehistory occurred during the Early Bronze Age .

Analysis of more than 3,000 bones suggests that unidentified assailants violently killed at least 37 men, women and children before dismembering and cannibalizing their victims between 2210 and 2010 BC at a site called Charterhouse Warren, located in Somerset, England. They then threw the remains of the bodies into a 15-meter-deep natural well, connected to a cave system.

The macabre discovery represents the largest example of interpersonal violence recorded during this period in Great Britain, according to the authors of the study describing the findings, published on Sunday (15) in Antiquity magazine.

The bones are rare, direct evidence that points to a cycle of violence in a period of the Early Bronze Age that experts considered to be largely peaceful in Britain. Most of the hundreds of human skeletons recovered from 2500 to 1500 BC in the country generally contained no evidence of brutality, the study authors said.

“In fact, we found more evidence of lesions in skeletons dating from the Neolithic period (10,000 BC to 2,200 BC) in Britain than from the Early Bronze Age, so Charterhouse Warren stands out as very unusual,” said lead author of the study, Rick Schulting, professor of scientific and prehistoric archeology at the University of Oxford, in a statement. “This paints a considerably darker picture of the period than many would expect.”

Researchers believe the intention behind the extreme treatment of victims’ remains was to dehumanize them as revenge after some serious offense. But trying to determine the exact motive of unknown attackers during a period before written documents existed in the region is proving difficult.

Discovering a macabre place

Excavations took place at Charterhouse Warren shaft, which is part of a limestone plateau, in the 1970s and 1980s as part of an effort to better understand the underground cave system. There, researchers unearthed piles of buried human bones, mixed with cattle bones, that told the story of mass violence striking an ancient community.

Several studies on the site and its contents have been carried out since its discovery. But the discovery came to Schulting’s attention in 2016 thanks to his colleague and study co-author, Dr. Louise Loe, head of Heritage Burial Services at Oxford Archaeology, which excavates and analyzes human skeletons from archaeological sites. Loe had studied the remains and knew that Schulting was interested in documenting evidence of prehistoric violence.

“We examined some of the material together and it quickly became clear that the extent of the modifications to the bones was far beyond what any of us had ever seen,” Schulting said. “So the project developed to tell the story of the place.”

An analysis of the bones revealed that many of the skulls showed fatal impacts from blunt force trauma, but the violence did not end there. Numerous cut marks covering the bones and fractures at or near the time of death showed that the victims’ heads, arms, feet, and legs had been removed from their bodies using stone tools. There was also evidence to show that their scalps and skin had been removed, as well as some heads with removed lower jaws and possibly tongues.

“In addition, a small number of small bones in the hands and feet exhibit bone crush fractures that are consistent with the flat molars of omnivores, including humans, rather than the sharper punctures caused by carnivores,” the authors wrote in the study. , noting that the body parts were quickly buried after being dismembered and cannibalized, making consumption by animals highly unlikely.

Analysis of the bones also showed that almost all of the victims were local to the area, suggesting that the attackers invaded the community to carry out their brutal acts. Furthermore, the extreme way in which the remains were handled goes beyond what Schulting and his colleagues have seen in ancient animal remains that have been dismembered.

“The most surprising thing is the extent of the dismemberment of the bodies,” Schulting said. “They were killed with blows to the head and then systematically dismembered, fleshless, with bones completely shattered.”

Researchers believe the bones are all from a single event. But given that there are different layers of material found inside the well, the animal and human remains could have been deposited “over decades and even a century,” according to the study.

“The location itself can be the common denominator; the natural well and the large underlying cave system invite comparisons to a portal to the underworld,” the study authors wrote.

But the bigger question is why this community was brutalized in the first place. To understand the reasons, the team analyzed similar violent events over time.

A history of violence

For context, the researchers looked at the nearby Paleolithic site of Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, just 3 kilometers to the west. There, previous excavations revealed six individuals whose bones had been dismembered and shredded, including possible human bite marks on hand, foot and rib bones.

But there is no evidence that the people who cannibalized them actually killed their victims, suggesting that cannibalism was actually a form of funeral ritual, the study authors said.

Researchers have found evidence of warfare with bows and arrows at Bronze Age sites, and there is evidence from the Early Neolithic, about 1,500 years before Charterhouse, when weapons like swords began to appear in the historical record, Schulting said.

But the Charterhouse Warren victims showed no signs of resistance, suggesting that a substantial part of the community had been taken by surprise or held captive and massacred, and that the way they were treated afterwards was very different from ritual. There are some limited examples of victims of violence being buried, such as a young man found in a ditch at Stonehenge who was shot multiple times by arrows, according to the study authors.

Researchers do not believe that the people were killed for food due to starvation, given the abundant amount of cattle bones found mixed with human bones. Instead, the study authors believe that cannibalism may have been an extreme way of dehumanizing victims by “differentiating” the dead, or eating their flesh and mixing their bones with cattle bones as a way of comparing the victims to animals. .

Innovations in weaponry such as daggers suggest that interpersonal violence was occurring at the time in early Bronze Age Britain, said Barry Molloy, associate professor in the school of archeology at University College Dublin.

Enemies could be considered “the others”. “People so far removed from their group that extreme violence against them has become acceptable,” said Molloy, who was not involved in the study.

Population changes in Britain in the centuries surrounding the event suggest that exceptional differentiation was happening as new groups took over parts of Britain, Molloy said. “The extent to which people in prehistoric Europe were willing to dehumanize and brutalize the enemy group is recorded quite clearly [em Charterhouse Warren],” he said.

But what could have necessitated such a dramatic act? The study authors do not believe the attackers were fighting for control of resources there, and climate change did not appear to have an impact on conflicts in Britain at the time. Although it is impossible to know the ancestry of the attackers, there is no evidence to suggest a clash of communities with different ancestries or ethnicities.

An extreme form of revenge

Understanding motivations in prehistory before written records existed in Britain is incredibly challenging, Schulting said. But the large number of victims means there must have been an even greater number of attackers, he said.

DNA analysis of the bones is underway to determine how closely related the victims were, and the research team also plans to study animal bones in the future, Schulting said. And there is evidence in the teeth of two of the child victims that they had plague, based on previous research, although it is unclear how this could have been linked to the violent episode.

“Possibly this was seen as revenge for some transgression,” Schulting said. “Violent acts like these can emerge in a climate of anger and fear — there is evidence that some individuals had the plague, which may have contributed to a feeling of fear and uncertainty. Tensions may have built up from relatively harmless beginnings, such as theft, accusations of witchcraft, and so on, and then spiraled out of control.”

Molloy said that while the theory of a single massacre is compelling, it is more frightening to think that this phenomenon occurred on multiple occasions, possibly normalizing cannibalism.

“Sometimes a single location can radically change our perceptions, and I believe Charterhouse has the potential to do just that,” Schulting said. “The extreme violence seen here was likely not an isolated incident. There would be repercussions, as relatives and friends of the victims would seek revenge, and this could have led to cycles of violence in the region.”

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This content was originally published in Bones found in England reveal a past of violence and cannibalism on the CNN Brasil website.

Source: CNN Brasil